Getting Started

Install ConsoleSentinel and run your first comprehensive web audit in under two minutes.

Prerequisites

Node.js 18 or later
npm, yarn, or pnpm

Installation

Install globally for CLI access anywhere:

npm install -g consolesentinel

Or add it as a dev dependency:

npm install -D consolesentinel

Your First Scan

Point ConsoleSentinel at any URL:

npx consolesentinel --url https://example.com

That is it. No config file needed. ConsoleSentinel will:

Launch a headless Chromium browser
Crawl your site following internal links
Run all 60+ audit categories on every page
Generate a graded report with actionable findings

Understanding the Output

After a scan completes you will see a summary like this:

╭──────────────────────────────────────╮
│  ConsoleSentinel — Scan Complete     │
│  Grade: B+   Score: 82/100          │
│  Pages: 24   Issues: 37             │
│  Critical: 0  High: 3  Medium: 18   │
╰──────────────────────────────────────╯

Grade — Overall letter grade from A+ to F
Score — Numeric score out of 100
Pages — Total unique pages crawled
Issues — Findings grouped by severity

Severity Levels

| Level | Meaning | | ---------- | ------- | | Critical | Must fix immediately — security vulnerabilities, total failures | | High | Should fix before next release — broken flows, major errors | | Medium | Plan to fix soon — performance issues, SEO gaps | | Low | Nice to fix — warnings, best-practice suggestions | | Info | Informational — detected patterns, environment details |

Output Formats

ConsoleSentinel writes results to the consolesentinel-reports/ directory by default:

npx consolesentinel --url https://example.com --format json
npx consolesentinel --url https://example.com --format html
npx consolesentinel --url https://example.com --format markdown

Limiting Pages

Control the crawl depth with --max-pages:

npx consolesentinel --url https://example.com --max-pages 10

Next Steps

Configuration — Customize auditors and thresholds
CLI Reference — Every flag and command
Integrations — Connect to Slack, Jira, GitHub & more

Web Dashboard

For a browser-based experience, start the built-in server:

consolesentinel --serve

Then open http://localhost:9400 in your browser.

The dashboard lets you:

Register your organization on first use
Trigger scans by entering a URL — no terminal required
Watch progress in real time via the live WebSocket feed
Browse scan history with grades, scores, and issue counts
Manage API keys for CI/CD and programmatic access
Set up schedules to run recurring scans automatically
Configure alert rules to be notified when issues exceed a threshold

The server stores all data locally using SQLite and requires no external services.

To change the default port:

consolesentinel --serve --port 8080